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Month: December 2014

It was November 2011 in Israel. I was on a bus heading to Eilat with my crazy travel companion, a beautiful and out of her mind Jewish Argentine girl named Nena. We’re on the bus where we met this Israeli guy named Gus and his friend Azaf, who is a little person. Nena and Gus were smoking a cigarette at a pit stop before we headed into the Negev desert. Nena befriends Gus and gets us free alcohol. Gus and Azaf join us and sit with us, and Gus immediately starts pouring us vodka beverages. At 1pm. We oblige. There was minimal communication with Azaf since he doesn’t speak any English but he’s encouraging enough with his smiles. We’re laughing, and before you know it we obliterated a bottle of vodka between the four of us, and we’re in Eilat. Gus casually says “Ok well we’re going to my best friend’s Mazie’s place you should come join us for dinner”. We oblige, luggage and all, and found ourselves surrounding a coffee table with 12 other Israelis who spoke not a word of English. We were a little uncomfortable but they were feeding us and giving us all this alcohol, which doesn’t need any translation to anyone of the backpacker variety.

Suddenly, all of Mazie’s friends are gone and they suggest we go to the ice bar. Mind you, Nena had 2 shekels in her wallet, and I had 0. Gus and Mazie pay for everything, and next thing we know we have a photoshoot done and there’s 75 pictures of us donned out in the ice bar gear (several of which I was giving Azaf a piggy-back ride). We’re having fun going down the ice slide, taking shots, and taking cheesy photos. While our tour guide was distracted, Nena and I were behind the bar taking even more shots of vodka.

We get back to Mazie’s place at 1.30am. When it looked like we were going to stay in Mazie blurts out NO WE ARE GOING OUT. She calls up her friend “FatBitch” and we go to her place where we continue to drink and smoke shisha (because that’s what all Israelis like to do while pregaming). We go to a club, FatBitch buys us all shots. We are particularly alluring to the club photographer and pursues to take perhaps 40 photos of us. That night is better documented than my high school and college graduation combined, believe me. The club was fun, and the night was a success because Nena and I didn’t spend not even 1 shekel. We are walking back to Mazie’s place where she said we could stay the night. A few blocks before we arrive to Mazie’s place she flirts with a HotGardener. It’s 5am. Mazie gives HotGardener her phone number.

Gus is sleeping in Mazie’s bed, the 4 of us cuddle. We only met half a day ago. Mazie wakes us up at 8am to kick us out of bed. HotGardener is coming over for a booty call. Nena and I proceed to the kitchen. We some cereal bars and fruits. 7 minutes go by and Mazie is kicking HotGardener out of the apartment, turns out he was a one minute man. Eilat is too small of a town for this to not go unnoticed.

We leave to go to the hostel we were supposed to be checked into the night before. The HostelOwner is obviously pissed we didn’t show up. HostelOwner wants to charge us for the night even though we weren’t there. We tell HostelOwner that our bus broke down in the middle of the Negev dessert and we were stranded overnight for 11 hours before a replacement arrived and that we caught colds in the cold of the desert (this comes back to bite us in the ass later). HostelOwner doesn’t buy it. Nena threatens to bring our business elsewhere, HostelOwner abides. Jews outsmarting Jews.

Moral of the story is when traveling, go with the flow and oblige and random things will happen to you. And to travel with someone equally ridiculous and spontaneous as you.

So what was our logical next move? Not to sleep of course but to mount a camel….to be continued.